About ten years ago...I was listening to a radio news interview...over a Dutch unemployment program started in the early 1970s. Basically...if you were too stressed to work....you got unemployment compensation....which went on for years. You showed up...even at age 25...and presented evidence that you were too stressed.
The interesting thing is that each and every year....the number of Dutch people on this program grew. At the point where I was listening to the report...it was up around 50k Dutch who were too stressed to work.
The curious thing was that millions in the Netherlands were paying taxes so that the 50k stressed folks could just sit at home. No one questioned this....which I thought was remarkable.
This has me baffled too. And I thought it again reading about the welfare housing system early today [excerpt] ....Paul Harris, 28, his sister Diane, 25 and her 10-month-old son Tommy, were told they had to leave the three storey house in Covent Garden following the death of their father after the association’s decision to invoke an “appalling” internal policy.
The family, who lived in the house in the heart of London’s theatre land for more than 25 years, were told they had to leave because a “succession” had already occurred.
In 1986, their parents Joan and John were given a joint tenancy with only one succession, meaning the property could be passed on only once.
After his wife died aged 44 in 1997, Mr Harris senior raised their four children alone. When he developed cancer, Paul and Diane returned to care for him....
....They ordered the siblings, both single parents on benefits, to leave as "there are many families in housing need in Covent Garden".....[end excerpt]
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Now that story is written to relay that the person who benefited by this eviction (moved into the house) is involved with the co-operative that supports these "households" but what struck me is that generational dependency is nurtured by these programs. But as author of the Blog that starts this thread notes, "..... Chris Grayling will find that the biggest obstacle to reform is not the benefits claimants themselves, but the bureaucracy that has grown up to service them....."
Let me suggest a novel medication I recently invented.
Hunger: Cures stress fast.
and goes to play poker every single day...